Field
Embodiments of the invention are directed to wireless or radio communications, and, more specifically, to interference-aware scheduling with broadcast/multicast signaling.
Description of the Related Art
In order to achieve high bandwidth or spectral efficiency in wireless communications systems, interference associated with transmissions between nodes in the system needs to be controlled and reduced. In systems where numerous transmitting and receiving nodes are randomly placed, coordination between the nodes may be required to avoid significant occurrence of interference. Therefore, a mechanism is needed to coordinate and optimally allocate available resources at each transmitting node in a manner that avoids interference.
One option for achieving optimal resource allocation is to have all active nodes measure channel gains to all other nodes, and provide that information to a resource manager. The resource manager can then determine the allocations for transmitter-receiver pairs and distribute those determinations to the transmitting nodes. A drawback of this centralized approach, however, is that it will likely result in a significant increase of overhead in the system.
In other distributed resource allocation schemes, each transmitting node may determine its allocation autonomously. For example, in an interference-aware radio system, nodes utilize interference-aware scheduling (IAS). IAS refers to a scheduling scheme where a transmitting radio node is aware of the interference caused by its transmission to another radio node. As a result, with IAS, the decision to transmit, and at what power level, may be based on the transmitting node's gains as well as the losses experienced at other nodes because of interference.